Here's another adventure story...."Jungle" by Yossi Ghinsberg. A harrowing true story of survival in the Bolivian jungle. It's so good, I read it in 3 days. I couldn't put it down. Bloodsucking leeches, jaguars, howler monkeys, whitewater rapids, mosquitos, foot rot, real live indians, waterfalls, death, life, and incredibly beautiful rainforests filled with incredibly beautiful waterfalls. Well, I guess you had to be there. As I read the book....I WAS there.

If you like stories about jungles, here's a fictional one I recently read, with some choice quotes included below. The story wasn't very realistic, but it was very readable.
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"Amazonia"
James Rollins
New York: Avon Books
2002

(p. 79)
Below, a vast sea of green spread to the horizon in all
directions. From this vantage, it was as if the entire world
were just forest. The only breaks in the featureless ex-
panse of the continuous canopy were the occasional giant
trees, the emergents, that poked their leafy crowns above
their bretheren, great monsters of the forest that served as
nesting sites for harpy eagles and toucans. The only other
breaks were the half-hidden dark rivers, snaking lazily
through the forest.

(p. 92)
"Don't complain. That's getting off cheap. There are
much worse insects out there, and I don't just mean the
big ones, like bird-eating spiders or footlong black scor-
pions. It's the little ones that'll get you. Are you familiar
with the assassin bug?"
"No, I don't think so," Frank said.
Kelly shook her head, too.
"Well, it has the unpleasant habit of biting and defecat-
ing at the same time. Then when the victim scratches the
wound, he drives the feces loaded with the protozoan Tri-
panozoma crusii into the bloodstream. Then in anywhere
from one to twenty years you die due to damage to the
brain or heart."
Frank paled and stopped scratching at the fly bite on
his neck.
"Then there are the blackflies that transmit worms to
the eyeball and cause a disease called river blindness.
And sand flies that can trigger Leishmaniasis, a leprosy
type of disease."

(p. 91)
And though the vegetation down at this level was
scant, it was not nonexistent. The floor was festooned
with fan-tailed ferns, thorny bromeliads, graceful or-
chids, and slender palms, and everywhere around were
draped the ubiquitous ropelike vines called lianas.

(p. 92)
"And are you prepared for the candiru?"
Her brow crinkled. "What type of disease is that?"
"It's not a disease. It's a common little fish in the wa-
ters here, sometimes called the toothpick fish. It's a slen-
der creature, about two inches long, and lives parasiti-
cally in the gills of larger fish. It has the nasty habit of
swimming up the urethras of human males and lodging
there."
"Lodging there?" Frank asked, wincing.
"It spreads its gill spines and embeds itself in place,
blocking the bladder and killing you most excruciatingly
in about twenty-four hours."
"How do you get rid of it?"
By now, Kelly had recognized the little fish's descrip-
tion and nasty habits. She had indeed read about them.
She turned to her brother and said matter-of-factly, "The
only cure is to cut the victim's penis off and extract the
fish."

WHOA! Cutting the penis off? Dats brutal, but if it saves a life.........
Another good one I read way back in my teen years, (I think I'll read it again) is "Wizard's of the Upper Amazon". It's around here somewhere. When I find it, I'll check back.

Another thread here was talking about the reality of jungle tribes vs. the sanitized cultural perception of them, like in the movie "King Kong." Here's another book I recently read related to that theme. Sorry for the gore and the language, but I don't like to censor. And thanks for the reading tips: I'll see if I can find those 2 books you mentioned in a bookstore.
----------
"State of Fear"
Michael Crichton
New York: Avon Books
2004

(p. 580)
"You just don't get it, do you?" Kenner said. "You think
civilization is some horrible, polluting human invention that
separates us from the state of nature. But civilization doesn't
separate us from nature, Ted. Civilization protects us from
nature. Because what you see right now, all around you--
this is nature."
"Oh no. No, no. Humans are kind, cooperative . . ."
"Horseshit, Ted."

(p. 586)
It was Sambuca, though Bradley could barely focus on his
face. The world was gray and faint. But he saw that Sambuca
was grinning at him, revealing a row of yellow pointed teeth.
And then Sambuca held up a knife so Ted could see it, and
smiled again, and with two fingers grabbed the flesh of Ted's
cheek and sliced it off with the knife.
There was no pain, surprisingly no pain but it made him
dizzy to see Sambuca hold up the bloody chunk of his cheek
and, grinning, open his mouth and take a bite. The blood ran
down Sambuca's chin as he chewed, grinning all the while.
Bradley's head was spinning now. He was nauseated and ter-
rified and revolted, and he felt a pain at his chest. He looked
down to see a young boy of eight or nine cutting flesh from
his underarm with a pocket knife. And a woman raced for-
ward, screaming for the others to get out of the way, and she
hacked a slice from the back of his forearm. And then the
whole crowed was upon him, and the knives were every-
where, and they were cutting and yelling and cutting and
yelling and he saw one knife move toward his eyes, and felt
his trousers tugged down, and he knew nothing more.

(p. 597)
Morton heard the barking and frowned.
"What's the matter?" Jennifer said. "The rebels chasing
us with dogs?"
"No, that's not a dog."
"It didn't really sound like a dog."
"It's not. They've learned a trick in this part of the world.
They bark like a dog, and when the dogs come out, they
eat them."
"Who does?"
"Crocs. That's a crocodile you hear. Somewhere behind
us."

Just finished reading "I Rigoberta Menchu" An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. It seemed slow reading for the first half of the book, then it picked up. It's much the same thing that has happened to all Indians worldwide. I've heard she is curently still in exile in Canada.

My next book is "Lasting Valor". About a black man, (yes, I said black) and his lifetime of dealing with racism, especially in WW2. He finally received a Purple Heart from Pres. Clinton for his courage and sacrifice. Incredible story what he and his troops did to help defeat the Nazis. Watched the story about him on History channel I believe. Incredible man.
_________________Oki NiKsoKoWa
(Hello all my relatives)
TikiJungle.com

One of my all time faves is "Ring of Fire by the Brothers Blair"
Anything by Ossa Johnson is fantastic

I'm reading "Eaters of the Dead" by Michael Crightin just now...it's sort of a reverse view of this...A civilized person from a subtropical climate gets mingled with some Norsmen int he 10th Century, and spends chronicles his life with them.

On 2006-03-22 21:40, Jungle Trader wrote:Just finished reading "I Rigoberta Menchu" An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. It seemed slow reading for the first half of the book, then it picked up. It's much the same thing that has happened to all Indians worldwide. I've heard she is curently still in exile in Canada.

I had to read this book for my cultural anth graduate course...a good read. Interesting follow up - apparently most of her story was fabricated. Rigoberta blames her writing partner, who in turn blames Rigoberta...quite a controversy. The story is probably a composite of the experiences of many different people in Guatemala - they're just not Rigoberta's.

I'd recommend "The Education of Little Tree" by Forrest Carter. It's his autobiographical rememberances of life with his Eastern Cherokee Hill country grandparents. If you have a heart at all, these characters will stay in your heart forever.

If you're interested in what happens when you spend 13 summers living among wild Alaskan brown bears, then becoming a grizzly entree, then read "Grizzly Maze".

This book is about the real life adventure of Timothy Treadwell, not to mention eccentricity, mania, possibly a con game, and two untimely deaths, four if you count the bears involved. It's a great book for discussing how crazy is crazy, and where does common sense end and science begin.

Yah Amiotiki, I guess Rigoberta fooled the entire world. Maybe we could say it was "based on fact".

kctiki, I bought that book last night. I already dig it after the first chapter.

Zebratiki, I saw the show on TV about Timothy and all the footage. Just amazing. There was no line drawn. With grizzly's you had better draw a line and NOT cross it and that line should be farther than 5 feet OR you're dead. Common sense was out the window.

James Michener's HAWAII is another good book to read. No brainer.
_________________Oki NiKsoKoWa
(Hello all my relatives)
TikiJungle.com